


Flightless Eagle

by DinoRoar



Series: Parchments of Prompt Responses [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 2/50, Bitter thoughts, Harry deserved better, Harry is an angsty teen, Misguided Albus Dumbledore, One Shot, Out of Character Harry Potter, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:48:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23858608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinoRoar/pseuds/DinoRoar
Summary: Angsty Harry reflects back on the lack of support he received in his first two years at Hogwarts, and wonders what could have been.Prompt: American EagleOne-Shot.
Series: Parchments of Prompt Responses [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1719328
Kudos: 16





	Flightless Eagle

Sometimes Harry would wish he was an American Eagle. He couldn’t remember where or when he had learnt about them, but he knew what they represented. 

Freedom.

Freedom was a foreign concept to Harry. Even now, at the age of thirteen he didn’t feel free to be himself. He always thought that once he escaped the Dursley’s he would be free to be who he wanted and do as he wished. Then when he got his Hogwarts letter, he thought the time had come, that he was going to be as free as an American eagle. He had imagined that the Wizarding world was finally going to save him from the Dursley’s and the cupboard under the stairs, that the locks pinning him in place were finally being released. 

Instead, he was rescued from one cage only to be captured and imprisoned by another.

Going to Hogwarts was meant to be a new start, the time for Harry to make new friends while learning magic of all things. However, so far, he had spent his years at Hogwarts fighting off Voldemort at every turn, and continuously pushing himself to try and meet the lofty expectations that were placed upon him as the Boy-Who-Lived. 

Harry had had enough. Enough of being made to fight a man that he didn’t want to fight. Enough of being forced to be involved in things he didn’t want to be involved in. And mainly, enough of being locked inside the cage of The-Boy-Who-Lived and every expectation that had been welded onto his shoulders from the moment he opened his letter and re-entered the magical world.

Hogwarts was supposed to be fun. Yes, it was also supposed to be educational, but Harry was meant to enjoy himself. And yet, he continued to find himself in situations that led to his ostracization by the rest of the school. They would mutter behind his back about how disappointed his parents would be, not that anyone could truly know how they would feel about the situation seeing as they were dead and had been for years now.

He could remember all the essays he would hand in, and the shaken heads and murmured exclamations of how his parents had always been more studious and how schoolwork came easily to them. Not that anyone would acknowledge how much easier it would be to write an essay on the different properties of unicorn horns without someone trying to constantly kill him. 

Harry was sure that if he was actually able to dedicate the time to it, and not have to constantly go around fixing and saving the magical world, he could probably get good grades on his essays to. But that was not to be the case, because for some reason Dumbledore seemed incapable of hiring a Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher that could actually teach (except for Moony, but Harry supposed there was nothing he could do to keep him around after Snape leaking his condition to the school board).

Another thing that annoyed him was how they apparently had a school board, but yet he saw no evidence of them actually doing anything for the students. Hogwarts preached no magic to be used in the corridors, a safety precaution he’d been told. Yet the students were still expected to use outdated and frankly dangerous broomsticks to learn to fly with, and surely that could not be considered safe by the board, but of course they sat back and did nothing.

But where were the Board of Hogwarts when he had to face Quirrell and almost died back in his first year. Surely they hadn’t agreed to the protections (honestly, Harry could laugh at the thought of the Stone being even slightly protected by the professors ‘challenges’) being put in place, because who thought it was even remotely safe for a Cerberus to be housed in the third year corridor of a school filled with children.  
What he really wanted to know was where were the School Board when he was begging his head of house not to send him back to the Dursley’s for the summer, because that should have surely set some alarm bells ringing. That was something he had wanted to know about since he got his letter, why did anyone think that two people who had expressed a hatred for magic would be good and appropriate guardians for a wizard, let alone The-Boy-Who-Lived as they were so fond of calling him. 

Realistically though, the only proactive thing the School Board had ever done was step in during the whole Chamber of Secrets catastrophe, but seeing as it was Lucius Malfoy himself that had started the whole drama it didn’t surprise Harry that he would step in to ensure there was a scapegoat for his mess. It didn’t say much that they hadn’t been at all concerned with the well being of students while a giant basilisk was roaming through the school pipes, honestly, you would have expected that they would have at least cancelled exams and provided some kind of counselling. 

Didn’t traumatic experiences and counsellors usually go hand in hand? Then again, Harry had never spoken to a professional about what he’d witnessed, and he had almost died twice while at Hogwarts. Thinking about it now, surely they should have made Harry speak to someone to ensure that he was still bloody sane after everything he had witnessed, even if he had to keep the whole Voldemort aspect quiet.

Even before having to deal with the two different versions of Voldemort, it probably would have done Harry some good to speak to someone (not that Hagrid wasn’t brilliant, but he could have done with a more thorough explanation) about his childhood and what had happened to his parents. After ten years of believing they had passed away in a car crash it was a bit of a shock to have his aunt scream that his parents had been blown up, later rectified to them being murdered.

Harry wondered if talking to someone about everything he had endured at the Dursley’s would have changed the way he behaved and reacted at Hogwarts. Would he have been more level-headed after receiving support? Would he have constantly felt the need to jump headfirst into danger to protect everyone else if someone had listened to him and told him that he didn’t have to save everyone for his parents to be proud of him?

He would never know. Harry would never truly know whether talking to someone would have changed the things he had done, or the way others had treated him. He could never change the past, and he supposed it was rather bitter of him to continue dwelling on the past, but it was hard to move past everything that had happened to him in life. 

He supposed that the first step in moving past would be to break free of the cage and the bars that contained the real Harry (if he even knew who the real Harry was anymore) and look to the future. Become what he wanted and no longer live to the expectations placed against him. That would show everyone. It would show everyone just who Harry was and what he was capable of. 

Harry was going to be free; he would make sure of it.


End file.
